Recently the rather unprepossessing 17^th century will of John Smith (P1/S/644), gained the distinction of becoming the 1000^th will to be conserved as part of the Heritage Lottery funded Wiltshire Wills Project.

The Will of John Smith

This project is digitising, conserving and preserving the 100,000 plus wills and probate papers (an estimated half a million individual documents) held at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre. To find out more, please 'read more'.

The Archive Conservation team has been involved with the project from the outset, carrying out conservation work prior to digitisation and overseeing the preservation and storage of the material.

Cleaning

After cleaning, John Smith’s will received a full traditional repair. This involved re backing the document with hand made paper, infilling missing areas with new repair paper and taking out a small endorsement on the reverse of one sheet.

Repairing

The will is one of an estimated 2000 – 3000 in the collection that require full conservation treatment before they can be safely digitised.

The project began in 1999 and is expected to continue for at least another 10 years.